Chapter Structure and Campaigns

Committees

Metro DC DSA has five standing committees. Committees are intended to oversee the chapter’s health and function, and to facilitate our other structures — working groups and caucuses — to do the work they’re passionate about. Read the formal description of each committee in our Chapter Bylaws.

If you would like to submit an item for a future Steering Committee agenda, please create a Red Desk ticket and select help topic: “Steering Meeting Agenda Item.” Steering Committee minutes are posted to our Minutes and Historicals page as they are completed.

Administrative Committee

Zach E. (Co-Chair), Brian W. (Co-Chair)
Email: admin@mdcdsa.org
Slack: Committee discussion takes place on a private channel that can be joined by invitation if you would like to help with AdCom work. If you have administrative questions or need assistance, let us know in #helpdesk.

Credentials Subcommittee

Point of contact: Kim L.
Responsible for developing an effective, accessible, and secure method for online discussion and absentee voting. Implementation is currently in progress and help is needed! Please contact @kimlehmkuhl on Slack if you are willing to pitch in.

Endorsements Committee

Caleb-Michael F. (Co-Chair), vacant (Co-Chair)
Email: endorsements@mdcdsa.org
Slack: #endorsement-committee
Charged with all communications and processing of political candidates who seek the Chapter’s endorsement. An administrative body that remains neutral on ideological motivation of candidates and conducts the administrative tasks of processing all endorsement applications, regardless of political party or office sought.

Finance Committee

Zach E. (Chair)
Email: finance@mdcdsa.org
Slack: #financeWe’re actively looking to build out this committee! If you have experience or interest in budgeting, financial organization or reporting, fundraising, compliance, bookkeeping, or regular old spreadsheeting, please get in touch!

Compliance Subcommittee

Responsible for providing the necessary legal and financial oversight our electoral work requires for the chapter to stay in compliance with DC, Maryland, and Virginia campaign finance codes across election cycles.

Internal Organizing Committee

Working Groups

Working Groups are formed whenever five dues-paying members come together around a shared vision of work. They may be issue or campaign-based, and may be affiliated with one of the five standing committees above or may operate independently as they deem useful.

Auditors

Email:
Slack:
We’re actively looking to build out this working group, which is required by our bylaws! If you have been a member of Metro DC DSA for at least one year, and have experience or interest in member data and engagement, financial auditing, surveys/polling or focus groups, communication workflows, or security culture and practices, please contact the Steering Committee!

DC ReInvest

Disability Justice

As Democratic Socialists, we know the capitalist system exploits the value of our labor, reducing the humanity of individuals to serve the interests of political and economic elites. Contemporary ableism is one of many iterations of oppression that facilitates capitalist exploitation. In particular, ableism reinforces the capitalist agenda by conditioning our society to see forms of social and economic stratification as being somehow natural and justified. Moreover, under capitalism, disabled individuals are oppressed not only as exploitable labor, but also as expendable resources which is justified by their classification as “less able,” code for “less deserving” of dignity and justice.

The Metro DC DSA Disability Justice Working Group aims to subvert this notion. We are dedicated to the empowerment and liberation of the DMV disabled community through non-hierarchical, issue-based campaigns designed by, in consultation with, and for disabled comrades. We also invite non-disabled comrades to act in solidarity and become an integral part of this Working Group. In addition, Metro DC DSA Disability Justice Working Group engages in internal and external political education surrounding the disabled community and its relationship to capitalism and other systems of oppression through workshops, discussion/reading groups, and panels. (Read the full mission statement.)

DSA 4 Bernie

DSA for Bernie is organizing to advancing the core demands of Sanders’s platform — not merely the candidate himself — such as Medicare for All, College for All, Green New Deal, ending cash bail, $15 minimum wage and more. DSA for Bernie is working to build a broad campaign of working people and progressives in the DMV to organize behind the Sanders campaign and its democratic socialist agenda.

Energy Democracy

Point of contact: Jeffrey Stottlemyer
Email: energydemocracy@mdcdsa.org
Slack: #energy-democracy
The Energy Democracy Working Group provides a forum for MDC DSA members to advocate for rapid decarbonization of our local and regional energy system. Its goal is to directly challenge the political economy and power dynamics that stand in the way of radical energy system transformation as well as specific energy sector stakeholders that profit from and/or enable the violent ecological and social outcomes of the status quo. The group intends to do this through efforts that empower and give voice to marginalized and under-served communities while addressing the technical and material complexity of the energy system itself. (Read the full mission statement.)

Internationalism

Email: internationalism@mdcdsa.org
Slack: #internationalism
Facebook: MDC DSA Internationalism
Twitter: @Intl_Solidarity
The Internationalism Working Group’s mission is to ensure that democratic socialist organizing and policy in the greater Washington, DC area and the United States at large includes a commitment to internationalism, which we view as a tenet of democratic socialism. This includes but is not limited to anti-imperialism, anti-militarism, anti-war, and anti-capitalism. We hold these values in pursuit of world peace and international cooperation. (Read the full mission statement.)

Labor

Email:
Slack: #labor
The Labor Working Group focuses on solidarity with workers such as turning out for picket lines and running our own trainings and campaigns focused on building worker organization in the DC area. Membership is open to everyone, especially those who are members of unions, worker organizations, and want to organize their workplace.

Migrant Justice

The Migrant Justice Working Group focuses on challenging the apparatus of private contractors that make up the deportation machine. Anyone interested in researching and protesting profiteers to advocate for an end to deportation can join us!

Mutual Aid

Email: mutualaid@mdcdsa.org
Slack: #mutual-aid
The Mutual Aid Working Group aims to allow comrades to provide essential resources and services to working class and marginalized communities in the District of Columbia on the basis of non-hierarchy, voluntary association, and solidarity. We show this goodwill based on the belief that mutual aid serves as a viable alternative to the profit-seeking, exploitative nature of capitalism. In addition to providing resources and services, we will conduct political education on the ways that mutual aid can assist in the Democratic Socialist struggle to upend the rapaciousness of capitalism. (Read the full mission statement.)

Political Education

Publications

Email: thesocialist@mdcdsa.org for questions and submissions
Google group: comms-all@mdcdsa.org to join
Slack: #publications for discussion and #washington-socialist for content review and editing
The MDC DSA Publications Working Group is overseen by the five-member Publications Editorial Board enabled by a bylaws amendment passed in the 2018 local chapter convention. That PEB, recently chosen by the WG membership, manages the work of the Pubs WG in producing our periodical weekly Updates and monthly Washington Socialist newsletter as well as refreshed and dynamic MDC DSA website content, print handouts for outreach and tabling, print and online thematic ‘Zines and dynamite locally-created design features for all of our activities, brands and imagery.

Caucuses

Ecosocialist Caucus

Zach E. (Co-Chair), Ashik S. (Co-Chair)
Slack: #ecosocialism
In a 21st century that is already being defined by intensifying ecological, economic, and political crises, any environmentalism without equitability won’t have the tools needed to win the consent and active participation of the masses, while any attempts at socialism that don’t deeply integrate ecology will be dead ends on a dying planet. Against the existential threat of climate change, it’s necessary to organize a global political mobilization that can overcome fossil fuel capitalists and resurgent fascists in order to rapidly decarbonize energy systems and withdraw massive amounts of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. We must also fight for democratic use of the world’s resources and to reverse the damage that capitalism is inflicting upon the earth and the global community. Our task is to build collective power and solidarity with overlapping struggles — and all struggles overlap with climate & environmental justice — so we can all live in societies that allow people to truly thrive while regenerating our planet. Our primary goals are to promote ecosocialist perspectives and to encourage MDC DSA members to engage in meaningful organizing campaigns that advance climate and environmental justice in and around the District of Columbia, especially when we believe that they will build capacity within the chapter while growing power for working class people. (Read the full mission statement.)

Gramsci Study Caucus

Email:
Slack:
The Italian Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci, although he died in obscurity in 1937 shortly after being released from Mussolini’s prisons, is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s leading socialist thinkers. Democratic socialist Michael Harrington, cofounder of DSA, wrote in his last book Socialism Past and Future that Gramsci’s ideas have much to teach the progressive left. Members of the Gramsci Study Caucus hope to conduct a fairly lengthy and in-depth study of Gramsci’s work. (Read the full mission statement.)

Libertarian Socialist Caucus

Point of contact: Brian D.
Email:
Slack: #lsc
MDC LSC is a caucus of members of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America, who believe that libertarian socialist values are the fullest embodiment of the democratic socialist vision. We cherish the MDC DSA’s status as a multi-tendency local mass socialist organization and wish to create a space within MDC DSA to discuss and organize for the development of socialism beyond the state. We take libertarian socialism to encompass those parts of the socialist movement (including syndicalists, council communists, anarchists, cooperativists, and municipalists, among many others) which have historically seen the surest path to socialism as residing in the creation of independent institutions in civil society that give the working class and ordinary people direct power over their lives. (Read the full mission statement.)

Mindfulness Caucus

Email:
Slack: #mindfulnesscaucus
In recognition of the importance of emotional and physical wellbeing for the strength of the individual, community, and long term goals of organizing, the Mindfulness Caucus seeks to aid comrades who seek a supportive community to learn about and practice mindfulness and a place for safe emotional sharing. (Read the full mission statement.)

MoCo Mutual Aid Caucus

Email:
Slack: #moco-mutual-aid
The condition of the poor and working class under the current system is therefore not only a moral atrocity, but a major impediment to socialist organizing. Thus we believe that in order for the DSA to succeed in building a popular transformative movement, it is vital that we center the victims of capitalism in our efforts. By establishing systems that address the material needs of our local communities, with no means-testing or bureaucratic obfuscation, we can show Montgomery County a better alternative for working families to get behind. (Read the full mission statement.)

SciFi Caucus

Email:
Slack: #scifi-caucus
The SciFi caucus serves as an intellectual and educational forum for discussing science fiction within the caucus or with the general body, and as a way to reach out to those who don’t yet identify as socialists but who might in the future. This caucus will also plan social activities related to science fiction.

Socialists of Faith Caucus

Email: faithcaucus@mdcdsa.org
Slack: #socialists-of-faith
Recognizing that radical faith traditions have been at the heart of many social movements. Also, recognizing that there are comrades within the chapters who are spiritual, or religious. An identity caucus whereby these comrades can interact, and pursue faith-based activism is to be established. We are aware of the critiques on religion by the secular left. We are open to be self-critical of our home traditions, and critical of the structures of oppression. The caucus wishes to build solidarity with comrades’ faith traditions and the broader left, as well as combat false representation of religion and ideology. (Read the full mission statement.)

Socialist Writers Caucus

Email:
Slack: #soc-writers-caucus
The Socialist Writers’ Caucus recognizes and honors the power of the written word to change the world. Writers and artists share and sharpen ideas, tell stories, inspire action, and bear witness to the human struggle for liberation. They literally help us come to terms with the world around us and understand where we were, where we are, and where we’re headed. The Socialist Writers’ Caucus seeks to create a space where writers in all genres can collaborate, critique, and mutually support one another in our work as we strive to define and enrich socialism for the twenty-first century. We also support Metro DC DSA in our capacity as writers and artists to foster internal communication and promote the chapter’s activities. (Read the full mission statement.)